


Counting Bodies

by Oroburos69



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Angst, Dark, Gen, Moral Event Horizon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oroburos69/pseuds/Oroburos69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 3x24, Strawberries and Cream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Bodies

There’s a bridesmaid’s dress hanging on a hook at the back of her office. It’s in a clear plastic bag, to protect it from stains. Lisbon will never wear it.

Grace sounds like her heart is breaking (is it grief or betrayal?). Lisbon wishes that she could close her ears the way she closes her eyes.

The phone drops from numb fingers. Jane has hung up on her. She worries about Jane for a second before the feeling slips away. Cho and Rigsby are with him. They won’t let Jane do something stupid.

Hightower’s kids are crying, but it grows more distant. A door closes and Lisbon can barely hear them.

Grace weeps. Under the choking sobs, is the faint sound of Craig’s breathing. It is wet.

Lisbon is rules and order. She thinks in straight lines, and colors inside those lines. When she defines who she is, she uses words like _steady_ and _reliable_. Sometimes she thinks of herself as _honest_ , though she does that less often lately.

Lisbon should really call him an ambulance. Grace probably can’t even hear him, her crying is so loud. The phone is right there. So close, so easy, three numbers to save a life.

It’s what Lisbon is supposed to do. Hell, she needs an ambulance--did Hightower call one? Lisbon wonders. Between the legs of tables and chairs, she can see Craig. He’s breathing still. Red John’s lackey. Jane will want him alive.

Grace cries. It’s going to be so hard on her. Questions, stares, how could you not knows?

Lisbon lets her hand fall to the ground, knuckles cracking against the hardwood floor. She’s bleeding. It’s important that she keep pressure on the wound.

The sunlight wavers, shadows passing her by. Grace is gone, stumbling toward the marble tiled bathroom. Soon, Lisbon hears wet gagging in between the heartbroken sobs.

Lisbon closes her eyes, and drags herself to her knees. The world swims around her, reality and perception turned liquid.

Craig struggles to breathe, tiny blood bubbles forming and popping in his mouth.

Lisbon had never killed a man before Jane joined the team. Since, she’s heard too many people gasping their last breaths. His tricks and schemes work, but the rapid, harsh escalation makes people panic, fight, run, stare down guns and think they can win.

It’s a small, nasty side of her that’s grateful, painfully so, that Jane, too, was forced to kill. They are in this together, whether he likes it or not.

The shaking tremors in his hands when Jane sees a rifle, his flinch at every gunshot--it’s only fair. Lisbon dreams of taking lives, he should have to, too.

She should get rid of him. The third man she’d killed, Lisbon had sat down with him, ready to let Jane go--the phone had rung, with a commendation for them both.

This unit is her greatest ambition, has become her greatest pride. Jane makes it work, gave her a closed case rate that some police departments would kill for.

Lisbon never told Jane. Two years ago, the CIA had been sniffing around him, with an eye to recruitment. That case, Lisbon had smiled and let Jane run free, staring down the man in the dull grey suit as he took in the absolute havoc Jane created.

They had left without ever speaking to Jane.

Craig opens his eyes. Traitorous, lying eyes.

Lisbon grabs a throw pillow, holds it under her shoulder so her blood won’t drip on him.

The bridesmaid’s dress is strapless. The bullet hole in her would have been covered in bulky bandages, ugly and far too visible.

Her eyes drift close, and Lisbon imagines the stitched up wound opening, in the middle of the wedding, blood pouring down the bodice and skirt like an angry accusation.

 _How could you? How could you?_

 __“Red John is a murderer,” she whispers, eventually, when she wakes up enough to open her eyes.

Craig’s eyes are white around the edges, wide, so wide. He blinks at her like a frightened animal.

The day Jane kills Red John--and he will kill Red John, of this, Lisbon has no illusions--he will leave. The whirlwind of his mind and mouth will be chained away in the dark--hospital or cell and the difference won’t matter, not in the dark.

She breaths out, slow, gentle.

Grace is hers.

An ambulance is screaming. Distant. So distant. She doesn’t have much time.

Jane is hers.

Cho and Rigsby are _hers_.

Lisbon places her hand over Craig’s mouth and nose, delicately holding them closed. He barely struggles, like he knows that he deserves it. Like he understands the necessity.

The ambulance is much louder now, and he hasn’t blinked in a long time, his eyes wide and dead. Lisbon gently removes her hand. No marks, other than a faint smear of blood on her hand.

She’s bleeding. No one will notice.

Lisbon widens her eyes, hunches her shoulders, forces herself to shake, shiver. Blood loss helps.

The door slams open. Paramedics swarm in.

“I can’t tell if he’s dead,” she says, directing them to Craig first. “He needs to be secured. You need--”

“He’s dead, ma’am,” the paramedic tells her. “We need to get you to the ambulance.”

Lisbon closes her eyes to hide her relief.

It is over.


End file.
